Iran’s President Died in a Helicopter Crash. Here’s Why it Matters.

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Video originally published on May 24, 2024.

This analysis examines Iran's President Died in a Helicopter Crash. Here's Why it Matters. in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events. The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.

Key Takeaways

Details were hazy, the cause of the crash was murky, but one thing was known for certain: that a man named Ebrahim Raisi was on board.
For President Raisi, May the nineteenth would have seemed like any other day in Iran's second-highest office.
But nonetheless, the helicopter and its two counterparts were trusted to get Raisi to the dam, which, by all accounts, they did quite successfully.
Also onboard were three members of the flight crew: two pilots, each holding the rank of colonel in the Iranian Air Force, and an Iranian Air Force major who was serving as the flight technician.
He also earned a whole laundry list of accusations of crimes against humanity by the UN, with the full extent of his actions not coming to light until the 2010s.

Key Developments

Details were hazy, the cause of the crash was murky, but one thing was known for certain: that a man named Ebrahim Raisi was on board. Raisi was, at that time, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran…and we say that he was, because now, we know his fate for certain. Raisi perished in the helicopter crash, one of eight souls on board…all of whom were lost at the crash site. It was the highest-profile death of a major world leader in the last decade, and one that came at an already-critical moment not just for Iran, but for the entire Middle East. In this special episode of Warographics, we'll be taking a close look at the death of Ebrahim Raisi: what went wrong, what happens now in Iran, and what his demise means for the Middle East, and for the whole world. Crash and Response. On that day, he was scheduled to have a meeting with the president of Azerbaijan, a man named Ilham Aliyev, in order to inaugurate the Giz Galasi hydroelectric complex. That complex, basically a massive embankment dam, straddles the Aras River, which, in turn, defines the international border between Azerbaijan and Iran. On the Iranian side, that's a relatively remote region, some several hundred miles from the capital city of Tehran. To get to the dam, Raisi boarded one in a convoy of three Bell 212-model helicopters, a machine estimated to be about forty or fifty years old. Like the rest of Iran's aircraft, especially Western-made ones like the Bell 212, parts are often in short supply for the aging aircraft on account of international sanctions, and safety checks are often, shall we say, lacking at best. But nonetheless, the helicopter and its two counterparts were trusted to get Raisi to the dam, which, by all accounts, they did quite successfully. On the journey, Raisi would share his helicopter with several close allies. Also onboard the chopper was Iran's Foreign Minister, a man named Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who's held his post since 2021. A representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was riding alongside them, one Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem. So was Malek Rahmati, the Governor-General of East Azerbaijan Province—which is, to be clear, located in Iran, not Azerbaijan. Raisi was joined by the head of his security team, Brigadier General Mohammad Mehdi Mousavi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Also onboard were three members of the flight crew: two pilots, each holding the rank of colonel in the Iranian Air Force, and an Iranian Air Force major who was serving as the flight technician. After a successful meeting and dam inauguration ceremony, all eight loaded up into their helicopter, to join their convoy en route to the city of Tabriz, where Raisi was due to inaugurate a project at the local oil refinery.

Strategic Implications

For President Raisi, May the nineteenth would have seemed like any other day in Iran's second-highest office. On that day, he was scheduled to have a meeting with the president of Azerbaijan, a man named Ilham Aliyev, in order to inaugurate the Giz Galasi hydroelectric complex. That complex, basically a massive embankment dam, straddles the Aras River, which, in turn, defines the international border between Azerbaijan and Iran. On the Iranian side, that's a relatively remote region, some several hundred miles from the capital city of Tehran. To get to the dam, Raisi boarded one in a convoy of three Bell 212-model helicopters, a machine estimated to be about forty or fifty years old. Like the rest of Iran's aircraft, especially Western-made ones like the Bell 212, parts are often in short supply for the aging aircraft on account of international sanctions, and safety checks are often, shall we say, lacking at best. But at thirteen-hours-thirty, local time, catastrophe struck. The area that the helicopter convoy was to be traveling through, had been issued a weather warning the day prior, and conditions on the flight were expected to consist of heavy fog and rain. According to Iranian state media, the pilot of Raisi's helicopter had directed the convoy to climb and pass over a specific nearby cloud, but some thirty seconds later, one of the other helicopter pilots observed that the president's chopper had disappeared. When the crash happened, it took place about 58 kilometers or 36 miles south of the convoy's point of departure, just southwest of a small village called Uzi. News wouldn't break for two and a half hours in Tehran, but when it did, that news was immediately discouraging: the helicopter carrying President Raisi had been forced to make a hard landing under unclear circumstances, forced down due to the weather conditions. Immediately after the crash took place, search operations began to try and locate the president and the other passengers onboard. The two helicopters that had accompanied Raisi spent some fifteen to twenty minutes searching fruitlessly for the crash site before making emergency landings and continuing their search on foot. Rescue teams attempted to make it to the area where the crash was suspected to have taken place. But between the weather conditions and the rugged, mountainous local terrain, neither the ground teams nor the people onboard the other two helicopters were able to locate the crash site. Shortly after the president's helicopter disappeared, the other members of the convoy had been able to contact the downed aircraft, where Ayatollah Ale-Hashem, the religious representative of Iran's Supreme Leader who had been on board, was able to pick up the phone and confirm that the helicopter had crashed in a valley. In a subsequent call, Ale-Hashem had been unable to provide information on any other survivors; quoting a call transcript of Ale-Hashem's statements, “I don't know what happened, I don't know where I am, I'm under trees, I don't know, I don't see anyone, I'm alone.” Ale-Hashem would continue answering calls for some three hours, but died before rescuers could reach his position.

Risk and Uncertainty

But nonetheless, the helicopter and its two counterparts were trusted to get Raisi to the dam, which, by all accounts, they did quite successfully. On the journey, Raisi would share his helicopter with several close allies. Also onboard the chopper was Iran's Foreign Minister, a man named Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who's held his post since 2021. A representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was riding alongside them, one Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem. So was Malek Rahmati, the Governor-General of East Azerbaijan Province—which is, to be clear, located in Iran, not Azerbaijan. Raisi was joined by the head of his security team, Brigadier General Mohammad Mehdi Mousavi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Over the course of the next day, search-and-rescue parties would struggle through heavy fog to locate the crash site, despite the involvement of some forty teams dispatched from the Iranian Red Crescent, and additional support via unmanned drones. The operation quickly went international, featuring airplanes, helicopters, and personnel sent from Russia, a night-vision helicopter and drone support from Turkey, and rapid satellite mapping from the European Union to aid in the search. The United States, too, received a request from Iran to help in the search, although a spokesman from the US State Department has claimed that logistical issues prevented the US from actually contributing any meaningful support. Several hours after search operations began, the helicopter was located at an altitude of 2,200 meters, 7,200 feet, and the situation was grim. Other than the tail section, the helicopter had been entirely incinerated in the crash, with no survivors at the crash site. By the following day, all eight bodies had been recovered and transported to the city of Tabriz, and Raisi's death would be publicly confirmed another day after that. Despite Iran's long and adversarial history with a variety of world nations, some of whom have proved particularly adept in the art of assassination, the country was nonetheless quick to rule out foul play in the crash. By all accounts, the crash of Raisi's helicopter was genuinely accidental, and although the precise root cause of the accident has yet to be identified—as either mechanical failure, pilot error, a weather event, or something else—Iran has apparently seen no reason to point the finger at any bad actor. Additional information coming from Turkey has indicated that the helicopter's transponder may either have been turned off or simply not present onboard the aircraft in the first place, with either possibility perhaps signaling less-than-perfect helicopter operation policies among the IRGC. But regardless of the root cause, the overall state of affairs was crystal-clear: Iran's president, its foreign minister, a regional governor, and a representative of the Supreme Leader himself had died, with an entire nation left reeling in the aftermath.

Outlook

Also onboard were three members of the flight crew: two pilots, each holding the rank of colonel in the Iranian Air Force, and an Iranian Air Force major who was serving as the flight technician. After a successful meeting and dam inauguration ceremony, all eight loaded up into their helicopter, to join their convoy en route to the city of Tabriz, where Raisi was due to inaugurate a project at the local oil refinery. But at thirteen-hours-thirty, local time, catastrophe struck. The area that the helicopter convoy was to be traveling through, had been issued a weather warning the day prior, and conditions on the flight were expected to consist of heavy fog and rain. According to Iranian state media, the pilot of Raisi's helicopter had directed the convoy to climb and pass over a specific nearby cloud, but some thirty seconds later, one of the other helicopter pilots observed that the president's chopper had disappeared. When the crash happened, it took place about 58 kilometers or 36 miles south of the convoy's point of departure, just southwest of a small village called Uzi. The funeral of Ebrahim Raisi was an appropriately somber affair in Tehran, where Supreme Leader Khamenei led tens of thousands of mourners through the rites of a grand funeral. The others killed in the crash were honored there too, in caskets draped with Iranian flags, while on Raisi's coffin, had been placed a black turban to signify his direct descent from the bloodline of the prophet Muhammad. When the ceremony concluded, the Supreme Leader withdrew from the event, and mourners carried the eight coffins out on their shoulders as crowds outside chanted “Death to America”. The coffins were then brought on a semi-truck for a procession through Tehran, eventually reaching the city's Freedom Square, a site where Raisi himself had given his fair share of public addresses. The funeral saw representatives from not just Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the nation's state and non-state allies from around the world, from Russia and China, to Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Qatar, to even Hezbollah and Hamas. A mourning period was declared to last five days, with Raisi eventually laid to rest on Thursday the twenty-third. But in order to truly understand what the death of Raisi meant for Iran, we've got to understand the true nature of what Raisi was in life: not just Iran's president, but something more. Raisi was 63 years old at the time of his death, nearly three years into a presidential term that began in August of 2021, but by the time he was elected, he had already spent years considered by Western analysts to be both a protégé, and a potential successor, to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei himself. Raisi had studied as a cleric since the age of fifteen, and he had earned notoriety among the international community while still in his 20s, where his role as deputy prosecutor general on a commission that called for the execution of Iranian political prisoners in 1988 earned him the nickname, the “Butcher of Tehran”.

The Helicopter Crash and Its Immediate Aftermath

He also earned a whole laundry list of accusations of crimes against humanity by the UN, with the full extent of his actions not coming to light until the 2010s. After his butchering days, he served as Iran's Chief Justice, its Attorney General, and as a presidential candidate in an unsuccessful 2017 bid for Iran's highest office, where he lost to a moderate candidate named Hassan Rouhani. When it came time to run again in 2021, the elections that time around were widely considered by international observers to have been rigged in Raisi's favor as a number of moderates and reformists were barred from participation. During his time in office, Raisi has presided over a wide variety of crises that ranged in their level of severity. On the less-catastrophic end, he oversaw things like Iran's forever-stalled nuclear deal with the United States—which was just as dead-in-the-water on the day Raisi died as on the day he took office. He oversaw Iran's relationships with both state and non-state allies across the Middle East, and tried to work Iran through a period of rather intense economic turmoil. Perhaps most defining of his presidency, Raisi would preside over intense unrest surrounding an anti-government protest movement in 2022, following the death of a young woman named Mahsa Amini as a result of police brutality. Raisi also navigated the stormy waters of the Israel-Hamas War, a legacy that Raisi has now left behind after he met his untimely end. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many experts suspect that Raisi's death actually wasn't such unwelcome news among Iranian civilians—a suspicion that's borne out, at least somewhat, by the fact that Raisi's funeral proceedings had none of the fire or passion that the Iranian public displayed after the 2020 death of Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani. As for whether anyone might have wanted explicitly to see Raisi dead…it's difficult to say. Certainly, Israel would be the immediately obvious suspect in any high-profile assassination of an Iranian leader, but, again, Iran appears unwilling to entertain the idea that any hidden hand might have been behind the crash. If history is any indicator, Iran would be loathe to admit that Israel had carried out a successful presidential assassination on its territory, but at least according to Israel's allies abroad, there's no intelligence to suggest that Israel was behind the incident. Of course, that's all a matter of what Israel's allies are inclined to disclose, and we'll be the first to admit that there is a lot of wiggle room between that metric, and what we would define as objective truth. But the fact remains that at least as of right now, there's no indicator that Israel or any other adversary was behind the helicopter crash.

Ebrahim Raisi: A Profile of Iran's Late President

But there's one other possibility we need to consider: that perhaps an act of sabotage was to blame, but one that came from within Iran, rather than from without. It would be unusual, in such a stable autocracy as Iran, for one of Raisi's rivals to think that they could take this sort of shot at him and get away with it…but that's not the only vector from which Raisi could conceivably have come under attack. This is a figure who's widely understood to have been anointed to the Iranian presidency, a clear potential successor to the Ayatollah…but he was also a guy with a whole lot of leverage, courtesy of his public office, and with Iran's behind-the-scenes palace intrigue remaining as notoriously opaque as always, it's not inconceivable that something behind the scenes may have made the Ayatollah and his mullahs regret having allowed Raisi to rise to such prominence. If that were the case, then airplane and helicopter accidents are a tried-and-true method of…shall we say…enemy disposal. Adding to the list of reasons to be suspicious, is the aforementioned lack of a signal coming from the helicopter's transponder after the crash, at least according to Turkey. If a transponder was indeed aboard, then someone, for some reason, would have needed to disable it—and simply trying to hide Raisi's movements for security's sake, in his own nation as he travels between scheduled public appearances, is not a compelling counterargument. But with this theory, too, there are a number of confounding variables to consider--chief among them, the fact that Raisi was not the only casualty of the crash. On the one hand, it's easy enough to argue that some of those killed in the crash were close Raisi allies, and might have been convenient to take out in one go. Iran's Foreign Minister and the head of Raisi's security detail would certainly make that list, and taking out all three together could hypothetically have a similar effect to, let's say, taking out a Wagner Group plane with both the group's military leader and its public figurehead onboard. But the leader of East Azerbaijan Province, Malek Rahmati, is not known to have had any meaningful level of political association with Raisi, much less a political alliance, and the ayatollah who was killed in the assault, Ale-Hashem, was a direct representative of the Supreme Leader himself. Could he have been sacrificed by Khamenei or asked to martyr himself for a broader purpose…well, it's technically not impossible. But for Raisi's death to have been arranged in such a way, would still be very odd—especially considering that Raisi likely takes plenty of trips airborne where other officials would not be traveling with him.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if Iran's leader dies?

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Why did the helicopter crash when killing Osama bin Laden?

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Which country killed the Iran president?

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Why did the helicopter crash still wake the deep?

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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